They're basically admitting that their candidate can't make it to 270 then. If that doesn't signify the end, then I don't know what does.

If Trump can get back ahead in NH, NC and FL (which they don't call long shots) they get to 269. ME2 gets him to 270. If you look at his TV spending last week, this seems to be their strategy, with CO being their only additional significant spend as a possible backup.

It's a risky strategy to bet the farm on a plan that relies on winning NV or CO but if PA, WI, and MI are looking to stay in the blue wall, what other choice do they have? They are focussing on states Bush Jr won at last once except for NM (too many mexicans) and VA (home of Kaine)

Does anyone know if internal polling is more accurate than public polls?

I'd imagine so since they use voter registration files and go by vote history rather than people that claim they're likely to vote. Public polls I imagine understate Democrat voters who tell pollsters they're unsure of voting but end up voting anyway.

Does anyone know if internal polling is more accurate than public polls?

I'd imagine so since they use voter registration files and go by vote history rather than people that claim they're likely to vote. Public polls I imagine understate Democrat voters who tell pollsters they're unsure of voting but end up voting anyway.

Obama's internals were very accurate in 2012, while Romney's were horribly off.

Internal polls should be better because they start with the voter data and they have their own metriics ofrom their GOTV operations, but they can get things wrong if they make bad assumptions. Romney's team assumed they would get their voters out and Obama wouldn't. They were wrong. It would be curious to see what assumptions the Trump team are using to show leads in NV and OH. I would bet that Clinton internals have her up in both.

It's like that recent upshot experiment where they gave the same raw data to four different pollsters, and each had a different result. Some showing trump up some Clinton up.

More internal poll goodness. Remember when Gallup said they were not polling the Presidential race directly? Well apparently they are, and here is a peek into their methodology for a poll they took from September 14-18.

Quote

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 14-18, 2016, with a random sample of 1,033 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, including 931 registered voters. For results based on the total sample of registered voters, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the 444 registered voters who support either Hillary Clinton or the 407 registered voters who support Donald Trump, the margin of sampling error is ±6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

When doing the back-calculations, this was a national RV poll of 931 registered voters. Their results were:

Clinton 444/931 (47.7%, rounded up to 48)Trump 407/931 (43.7%, rounded up to 44)Undecided or Third Party 80/931 (8.6%)

They're basically admitting that their candidate can't make it to 270 then. If that doesn't signify the end, then I don't know what does.

Clinton pretty much has Trump 99% boxed out if that scenario is true. No complacency though

This kind of reminds me of a certain German leader whose close confidants and military advisers told him while the Red Army was in the outer suburbs of Berlin, and Montgomery and Eisenhower are racing from the West as fast as they can, while the whole time the dude is camped out in his bunker listening to the historical equivalent of Baghdad Bob, and no one will say what the actual reality of the situation is.

Internal polls should be better because they start with the voter data and they have their own metriics ofrom their GOTV operations, but they can get things wrong if they make bad assumptions. Romney's team assumed they would get their voters out and Obama wouldn't. They were wrong. It would be curious to see what assumptions the Trump team are using to show leads in NV and OH. I would bet that Clinton internals have her up in both.

It's like that recent upshot experiment where they gave the same raw data to four different pollsters, and each had a different result. Some showing trump up some Clinton up.

Internal polls may be better for people working in the campaign who get to see all of them, but obviously we don't get to see all of them.

From the Democratic side, we are selectively leaked the ones that look good (e.g. statistical fluctuations in their direction). From the Republican side, we get more because that ship is leaking like crazy...but we generally expect Democratic polls to be of better quality, because all the young people with brains are working for the Democrats.

But yes, obviously it's not good for Trump that he's down in 4 states that he needs to win, and his only possible path to victory is the FL/NC/NH/ME-2 eye of the needle to 270 (and hope there are no faithless electors). Also doesn't help that those states aren't the best correlated, so pulling the inside straight here isn't likely at all.